72 Mercury Comet GT in Germany

Motor looks good. Thinking about finned valve covers myself.

It is so nice to hit that milestone where the motor goes in the car again. That has to be a good feeling. Makes it seem that the time to be driving it will be sooner now.

 

another busy day today...

look how nice the hurst shifter on the 4 speed fits the trans tunnel! and the shifter looks great in the car!





i used brute force to make the monte carlo bar fit:



i also put quite a bit of the front end back on:


here's the car waiting for more progress on monday!

 

Nice

 

Looks awsome! I like it without that consolette.

 

Great work Thomas! Thanks for sharing all these progress pictures with us.

 

I hope you are keeping the those wheels. I had a pair or Rocket wheels like that back in the day. They looked really really good after repainting the the black and polishing up the bare aluminum parts. If you aren't going to keep them you can send them my way.

Here's a Photoshop somebody did with my car and the wheels off somebody elses.

 

glad i keep you all entertained
the wheels will definitely stay!

assembled the front end completely today. the car looks great with the wheelhouse trim.

 

I've been liking those wheels too. Glad to hear you are keeping them on the Comet.

I was looking for a set of those for my daily driver Explorer. I think they would look really sharp, even on something newer like that.

 

Looks awesome. Once you get the wheels restored it will be even better. Once the black on the wheels is repainted it makes the unpainted parts really stand out. But Oh boy is it alot to mask off.

 

I have seen the insets painted body color more than once. That looks good too, but I would still lean toward black here.

 

made a quick trip to the garage today.
arp had the wrong length bolt in their - expensive - aluminum water pump bolt kit. so i had to measure and order the correct ones. quite a task to hunt down 5" long unc sized bolts in metric europe!
installed the water pump, pulley and fan. i found the felpro gaskets between pump and plate and also between plate and block not very well fitting, so i used liberal amounts of sealant...




i guess the aluminum radiator will be next. let's hope it clears the crossmember and provides mounting options for both the shroud and a universal overflow tank.

 

Aluminum Radiator

Hi Tody:
Been watching your progress. Looking good !!! you've taken great care in your build and it shows. I believe there is a direct replacement radiator that will fit your car without alterations to the frame or crossmember. Champion Radiator is the manufacturer. I just installed one in my Son In Laws Maverick with a new 5.0 .. worked great , cools wonderful , and wasn't that expensive. Just a thought. Looking forward to seeing this Comet "running" around your area. Post some photos.. Cometized

 

chip, good to hear from you
champion radiator is exactly the make i have already on the shelf. i remember a discussion on here that they changed the design so the petcock won't hit the crossmember. i just don't know if they had already changed that when i bought the radiator almost two years ago.

i will definitely post pictures when the car is up and running. i hope to attend quite a few events with it this summer. if i can get the headers in, that is...

a great addition to the car would be rear louvers - did you ever get around to look into the reproduction options?

 

some more info others might find helpful:
when installing the toploader i used a 72 mustang rug-av1 wide ratio version with a 164 bell. it fit the c4 crossmember perfectly. the shifter - a hurst competition plus - came up exactly in the stock shifter location. i used the auto trans hump. the shifter boot mustangsunlimited sells - both upper and lower part - bolted right up to the existing holes of the c4 hump.

 

test fitted the radiator today. rad itself fits fine. of course, there are some issues



i obviously have the wrong lower hose. ordered gates part no 20609 today, should be right for 70 mustang.


as mentioned above, the petcock does hit the crossmember. i found a thread that actually a metric bolt is needed to plug it. finally something which is easy to get over here


looking at the pictures i saw that one mounting tab of the shroud is broken. will fix that with fibreglass and clean up an repaint the whole shroud.